Back(log) to the Front: Week 12 – and an Update

I’ve come to the conclusion about something regarding my weekly backlog. Before I get to that however, let me briefly discuss two more games that I played this week that I bought on March 10th…otherwise known as Mario Day.

New Super Luigi U Deluxe

I know this released this year, but hear me out. I had originally owned this game on the Wii U but never took the time out to play the New Super Luigi U content. I would eventually give up my Wii U to a nephew, and now have a child of my own old enough to play the game. So I do what any sucker does…I bought it again. Since not much was added content wise from what I can tell, I figured it still counts as backlog even if its a re-release for a new system.

Instead of focusing on the Mario portion that I already completed, I will talk about the New Super Luigi U side of things.

I hate Luigi. Not even as a character or his becoming a meme, but how the character controls in certain games. I understand making him different, and that’s fine, but I still don’t like it. Didn’t like it back then with Super Mario Bros. 2 and don’t like it here. He still has a super floaty jump marked by imprecise skittering when he is moving both in the air and on the ground, which makes these already tough levels more difficult.

The levels took me by surprise regarding their challenge. The bosses themselves haven’t seemed any more troublesome than the base game, but the levels getting to them are arranged in a way to make the player sweat. They are designed well as one would expect from Nintendo, and done so without feeling cheap. Every death is yours to own.

Other than that, it’s typical New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe fare from what I can tell from enemy behaviors to power-ups. I’m not a fan of the aesthetic of this game (such as the “wah wah” in the music that enemies dance to), but it’s still a well developed game.

My son loves it even if he isn’t great at it and the type of co-op involved where you can screw each other up is the bane of my existence when we play. I still have a good time for the most part, and so does he, so that’s all I’m really wanting from this game.

Super Mario Party

Confession time – I have never put a lot of time into the Mario Party games. Even my time with them has been less than stellar as the games were hit-or-miss and too much luck was required between rolls and star-prizes at the end.

So of course I had the bright idea to buy the game to play with my wife and son. To nobody’s shock – it’s still Mario Party. With that comes some good and some bad.

For instance, there are very little maps to play on. I’ve only seen three, but people say there are four. So that might be in another mode or unlocked later. Whatever the case is, four is still a shortcoming in a series that typically has more. Even five months later and nothing of value has been added. I would have expected new boards at the very least.

I also dislike the controls. Mainly that it has to be played with one joycon per player and something like the pro controller can’t be used. It mixes in both standard controls and motion controls, so expect to paddle a boat using motion in one mini-game while using the stick and buttons to try and knock opponents out of a ring in hamster balls.

I haven’t tried out all the modes, and I have no intention to go online to see some of them. However, my son and I do enjoy the one where we play as a team, and we each can move around a stage freely based on dice rolls to get stars. There’s a method of tactician involved to plan ahead of where a star may be that I enjoy, and it’s probably going to be the go-to game for the two of us.

As I said though, it’s still Mario Party. If you didn’t like the others, I doubt this will change your mind. If you did like the others, I would say the biggest hurdle would be lack of boards to play on. For better or worse, this is the Mario Party for Switch. I would have expected Nintendo to nail it a little more though.

UPDATE TIME FOR FUTURE BACKLOG ARTICLES

I’m going to make a little change to how I do these. The original intention was to play something new each week in my sea of drowning induced backlog and write about it, but that resulted in many unfinished games.

Which is a shame, because a lot of games I have played I have wanted to finish. Unfortunately, I just don’t have a ton of time to play games at this point in my life. So longer games are especially difficult to finish in a timely fashion. Persona 5 took me three months to see the ending after almost daily playing.

So while I still intend on playing my backlog games, I’m going to give myself some more time to play them and hopefully finish them. It’s come to the point where I’m not enjoying playing them as I should, because I’m not getting invested in it. I have to jump out and play a new game for the weekly article and in turn is ruining my interest in playing longer games.

To try and work this into a more doable format, my pieces will now be bi-weekly. They will be written similarly as past articles, but hopefully I can get more games in that require more time investment. I’ve already started one, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. I’m even more excited I have more time to work through it now!

That’s it for this week! See you in TWO weeks time now, but plenty still goes on here. Check it all out including some of the below!